Code Vein worked for me because it let me change my mind. I could chase a build, hate it, rebuild it, and still feel like the game wanted me to experiment. It wasn’t just “Souls, but anime.” It was a systems-driven action RPG that stayed fun even when it got messy. Code Vein II goes after something bigger: a wide world, two timelines, and a structure that asks a bit more variation and a different approach than just going in one straight line. When it all clicks, it’s the most interesting this series has ever been. When it doesn’t, you start noticing the sharp edges and wish they did a couple of things differently. Let’s jump in!
A story of contrast
Code Vein II sends you back to the same places more than once. Early on, that mostly feels practical, but after a while, the repetition starts to do something else. You begin to recognise locations as moments in a longer timeline. You remember what stood there before. You notice what’s missing now.
That’s where the game quietly lands its better story beats. Walking through a space you’ve already seen in a different state gives context without explanation. A room that once felt busy later feels abandoned. A location that used to function is now just part of the landscape. I do appreciate this approach. Although the story starts off way too slow and there’s way too much explanation going on, the team did create an interesting story for the ever-evolving world you’re part of. It’s a lot of ‘show, don’t tell’ but when it works, and you get sucked into it (vampire pun intended), you’ll want to keep playing to see it all unravel.
The problem is that Code Vein II rarely lets those moments exist in total silence. Dialogue has a habit of stepping in too quickly, spelling out motivations, reintroducing factions, or reminding you why something matters. Conversations often feel overloaded with names and backstory, even when the scene itself was already doing the work. Instead of deepening the impact, that tendency flattens it, and the story even loses some of its momentum because of it. It’s not hand-holding per se, but it bothered me more than once.
On the other hand, there are stretches where the story clearly knows where it wants to go, but rushes to get there. Emotional beats arrive before they’ve fully settled. Characters talk through themes that would have landed harder if left unspoken for a moment longer. It creates a strange disconnect: you understand the stakes, but you don’t always feel them as strongly as the game seems to expect. What makes this frustrating is that the structure underneath is solid. Moving back and forth through time gives the narrative room to reframe earlier events and relationships. When the game trusts the player to notice those shifts, the story gains weight. When it doesn’t, it starts to feel like it’s narrating itself instead of letting the experience speak.
Welcome to the open world
In the original Code Vein, a lot of the world was created to feel compact, hostile, and built around forward momentum. You were rarely far from danger, and even short stretches of calm felt earned. Code Vein II trades that structure for a bigger scale, and while that shift opens up the world, it also changes the rhythm in ways that aren’t always to its benefit.
There are moments where the open world works exactly as intended. Crossing a wide, ruined landscape can feel heavy in a good way, like you’re passing through something that has already collapsed, not exploring it for points of interest. When objectives line up naturally with the environment, the game maintains a sense of purpose. You’re moving through the world, not stopping to admire it. But that feeling doesn’t hold consistently. Too often, large stretches exist mainly as connective tissue between key moments and important encounters. The game asks you to spend time travelling without giving that travel enough tension or discovery to justify it. In a genre that lives on pressure and pacing, that absence is noticeable. It’s one of those moments where the progress you’re making is forcefully slowed down because it just takes some time to travel to the new location. I’m okay with slowing down in a soulslike game, especially when I need to grind a bit more in order to defeat the harder enemies, but slowing down because I needed to travel in an open world isn’t something I really appreciate.
Navigation adds to that friction. I don’t mind being disoriented when the world itself invites exploration and when getting lost leads to surprises or new angles. Here, confusion often comes from unclear communication rather than design intent. Objectives that appear reachable but aren’t, paths that look viable until they abruptly aren’t, and verticality that isn’t always readable on the map all contribute to a sense of busywork. It never fully derails the experience, but it does wear on it. Instead of heightening tension or immersion, movement across the world can start to feel like another task. And over time, that kind of travel dulls the urgency that Code Vein II’s story and combat are trying to build.
Combat is pretty solid
Combat in Code Vein II makes its intentions clear fairly early on. If you want access to your stronger moves, you have to stay involved. Hanging back too long dries things up quickly, while reckless aggression usually ends just as badly. Most fights push you toward the same tension: stay close enough to drain and keep your options open, but not so close that you lose control of the space.
That drain-and-spend loop becomes second nature after a while. I’d step in, look for an opening to land a Jail drain, the tool that lets you siphon blood to fuel your abilities, spend what I gained on a burst of attacks, then back off before things tipped too far. When I mistimed that flow, draining too late or spending too much at once, fights fell apart fast. When I got it right, combat felt steady and intentional, like I was always setting up the next few seconds instead of scrambling to survive.
When a fight wasn’t working, the answer was rarely to just hit harder. More often, it came down to adjusting how I sustained myself. Changing my Jail, being more deliberate about when I drained, or simply slowing down my ability use often made encounters feel manageable again. It never felt like I was undoing progress, more like I was tuning my approach until the fight finally clicked, and that’s how I like to play my Soulslike games.
Boss encounters lean hard on that same pressure. The better ones force you to stay engaged, because backing off for too long leaves you starved of resources. At the same time, they punish greed immediately. I found myself watching my spacing and my Ichor more than the boss’s health bar, knowing that one sloppy sequence could snowball quickly. Winning usually came from staying calm and keeping the rhythm intact, not from burning everything as fast as possible.
The partner system has a noticeable impact on how these fights play out. Having someone alongside you gives breathing room, especially when you need a moment to recover or reposition. The revive mechanic smooths out failed attempts, letting you recover from a single mistake without restarting the entire fight. It keeps the pace moving, but it also takes some of the sting out of danger. Once you’re comfortable, that safety net can make certain encounters feel less tense than they probably should.
Combat does stumble at times, mostly when clarity breaks down. In tight arenas, the camera can struggle, and some enemy attacks are harder to read than their animations suggest. There were moments where I took damage and had to pause for a second to figure out what actually went wrong. Those instances don’t dominate the experience, but they stand out precisely because the rest of the combat relies so heavily on timing and awareness.
Even with those issues, combat remained the part of Code Vein II that I consistently enjoyed the most. Managing drains, deciding when to spend resources, and adjusting my approach mid-fight kept encounters engaging well into the late game. It’s not flawless, but when everything lines up, the game’s combat has a clear identity, and it’s strong enough to carry the experience when other elements start to waver.
Performance
Games like this ask a lot from the player, especially once fights start demanding precision. You need to be able to trust what you’re seeing and feeling on screen. Most of the time, Code Vein II gets there, but it doesn’t hold that line consistently. In calmer moments, the game can look great. The problem shows itself once things speed up. In larger areas, movement isn’t always as smooth as it should be, and during more intense encounters, small stutters or sudden texture pop-in become harder to ignore. They don’t break the game outright, but they do pull you out of the moment, and it can break the immersion, especially when timing starts to matter.
Those hiccups matter because combat relies so heavily on rhythm and feedback. When an animation doesn’t read cleanly, or the game briefly drops a frame right as you’re committing to an action, it creates doubt. You start wondering whether a hit was your mistake or the game momentarily losing its footing. That uncertainty doesn’t ruin fights, but it does chip away at the confidence you need to fully commit during tougher encounters. It’s not something that happens all the time, and I was able to push past it, but it showed up often enough that it stopped feeling incidental.
Conclusion:
Code Vein II clearly wants to be more than a continuation of the first game. The shift in structure gives the world more room to breathe, and the combat still rewards players who like to adjust, experiment, and find their own rhythm. But that extra space comes at a cost. The open world softens the pressure that once kept everything moving forward, and the technical rough edges tend to show up exactly when clarity matters most. I enjoyed my time with Code Vein II, even when it tested my patience. I just kept thinking how much stronger it could have been with a tighter focus.
